The Death of a Greek Lover
by David Plante (2026)
NYRB Poets (2026)
88 pp
Written as an elegy for his partner of forty years, Nikos Stangos, David Plante’s book-length poem The Death of a Greek Lover is one of my favorite personal discoveries of the year. Composed in stanzas of varying length — some a couple of pages long and some just a few lines — the poem also explores poetry itself: how can poetry can serve as a vessel for all that we are feeling, and how does sending that vessel out into the world affect us all?
I’m not very good at talking about poetry. It’s so emotional and I lack the critical language to adequately articulate what I’m feeling, but this one is so good I have to try. It’s not that this poem is exceptionally complex. In many ways, it is beautifully simple. It’s just so rich, and frankly I have no idea why some stanzas strike me quite the way they do.
Here is how it begins (already captivating me):
This is a poem of snow falling
In a winter wood, the smell
Of resin in the gelid air,
And a deer alert and still,The trees are crystalline
The ices so clear the weeds show
In the current of the stream,
And no pathways or stone foundationsLeft from some other time,
And no one, ever, to fell the trees,
The wind and glacial rocks forever pure
In this inviolable land, and no one there.
Turning the page:
I held you in my arms until your body
Was cold, and I laid you on the bed
And turned to the window to watch
The night give way to day,
And I turned back to you,
Dead in the sunlit room.My love, my love, my love.
I pressed my forehead to the wall
As your body was carried out,
And the pang came to me,
He’s gone, he’s dead,
The sheets disheveled,
The pillows on the floor,
And I slept where you died.
As the poem goes on, there are a lot of references to Greek myths and heroes and poetry, and an exploration as to what all of that means . . . and how. Plante wonders how he, someone who does not believe in God, still gets struck when Donne calls to God to batter his heart. How can his grief also be meaningful?
Amidst this exploration, we get fine short stanzas like this:
Traveler, rest in the shade of a pine,
And listen to the distant flute of a shepherd
In the hills, and think that, in time,
You’ll walk over the hills, and not return.
So much of this is an emotional journey that I’m being let in on, and I myself wonder how the magic is done. And I wonder what role I, as a reader, play in this elegy:
No one will believe I loved you as I did
Until I’m dead, too, because our love
Will only have its lasting meaning when
This poem is no longer mine,
Our love no longer ours, but will be
Where poetry rises up to be poetry,
And leaves us out, […]
I love being surprised by a book, and this book has continued to surprise me since I put it down.
